Bob, This has actually happened in the
past (802.4 was brought out of hibernation once or twice for various items).

My recollection of the process (not
adequately documented in our rules, of course) is as follows:

1. As a hibernating WG chair, the chair
maintains a list of participants and “experts”, who can be
consulted in the event of a request for interpretation or maintenance item. Usually
these are former WG members, who participated in the development of the
standard.

2. When a potential need for
re-activation is determined, the hibernating WG chair contacts his list of experts
to see if there is sufficient support and interest to permit meaningful
standards development to occur. At the same time a general Call for Interest
is publicized to attract any new interested participants.

3. If sufficient participant response is
received and documented, the hibernating WG chair can bring forth a motion to
the SEC that a formal reactivation of the WG be approved.

4. Assuming the motion to reactivate is
approved, at the first official session of the newly reactivated WG all active
participants are granted membership (i.e. voting rights) and officer elections
are held, just as for newly formed WGs. After that point in time, the
3-meeting rule takes effect.

I hope this helps and maybe we can see
that this point is covered as part of our ongoing rules update process. J

Ken raises (indirectly)
another issue with membership. What happens if the SEC decides to bring
802.10 out of hibernation? Who are the members? When do they gain
membership? This is another example of how a WG might "pop" into
existence.

I'd like to throw my 2 cents in here
and stir the pot a little more. In Mat's second paragraph below, he
alludes to a Working Group evolving from a Study Group (which happens to be the
method by which WGs have come into existence in the recent past) and that a WG
doesn't pop into existence. In fact, 802.10 did not evolve from a SG --
it "popped" into existence from work that began outside 802. At
the very first meeting of .10 everyone that attended was granted voting rights,
and the Chair (who had not previously participated in 802) had Exec voting
rights at the next Plenary. Is it the expectation that this
will NEVER happen again in 802?

Unless there is
an "unwritten rule" that everyone on the current Exec
knows (except me, since I haven't been around in a while) that ALL
new WGs will ONLY come from SGs that have been spun off from
existing WGs (and therefore people have been building up credits
toward voting rights in the manner specified in the P&P),
then I think the Exec needs to keep the current practice of awarding membership
to all who attend the first meeting of a new WG. (Sorry for the run-on
paragraph.) If this is really the case, then I think there may
be some shortsightedness on the part of the Exec, as to where new 802
projects might come from.

I think you at least
partially misunderstand my intent in the changes I proposed. Your
arguments seem to focus strongly on the officers of the group, and not the
general membership. So let me ask you this. Why do we have the
“3 session rule” that normally applies to achieving
membership? If one meeting is enough for anyone to follow what is going
on technically, and understand the procedures in place, why don’t we just
let every expert act as a member the moment they walk in the door?

A WG is not a virtual
particle popping in and out of a vacuum. On day one, it has a context
that it evolved in and is continuing to evolve in. That context is the
Study Group it evolved from, and 802 itself. To properly participate even
in an election, I believe participants need to have a solid sense of what they
are there to do, and how it is normally done. Not to mention some level
of familiarity with the candidates. I don’t think one meeting or
even one session is enough. And I don’t think the creators of the 3
session rule did either. While the EC may be able to mentor the
leadership of a new WG, I don’t think they can effectively mentor the
membership itself if it is completely green along with the leadership.

I firmly believe
that the creators of the “first meeting” rule chose to let everyone
in because it was convenient and easy to do the book keeping. I am sure
they saw the potential flaws, but presumed those potentials were generally
remote and could be neglected. They probably did not believe these remote
possibilities justified the inclusion of a more complex initial membership
process. I think we now see that those potentials are larger than may
have originally been anticipated. I for one now see a need for a more
complex start up process which better preserves the intent of the 3 session
rule for gaining membership. So again I ask, in your mind why have the 3
session rule if 3 sessions are not required to participate intelligently in a
group?

I believe that including any criterion related to
experience with LMSC, its working groups, or study groups as a
prerequisite to holding office is a path to constant judgment calls by the SEC
as to how much experience is enough, what experience is relevant, and how
recent that experience must be. So, must an officer candidate hold a working
group office prior to running a study group, in order to be qualified? Which
positions? How long?

If we are going to require an experience criterion to
be met, I want it to be explicit, concrete, and measurable. It must NOT be
subject to interpretation. Given that the current proposed change lacks
this specificity:

In 5.1.3.1 delete:

"In no case should a
person who is not a member in good standing of IEEE 802 by the end of the first
session of establishment of a WG be considered to Chair a WG, as they are
unlikely to have sufficient familiarity with the Policies and Procedures of
IEEE 802, as well as the IEEE 802 Standards Association (IEEE-SA), and IEEE
Computer Society."

and replace it with:

"Candidates for the
positions of working group chair and vice chair(s) shall be members of the
working group."

I believe that the SEC has the obligation to mentor
the officers that are chosen by the working groups. It is the membership of the
working group that is best situated to evaluate the qualifications of its
leadership. The SEC, at best, is second guessing the working group decisions.

I also don't agree with the substitution of study
group participation for credit toward working group membership. This is a
hack to try to give preference to study group participants, on the theory that
they have more "experience" with 802 by having attended a study group
meeting or two and, thus, would make better officers. Or, possibly, this
is a misguided attempt to prevent "loading" the membership at
the first meeting and electing a slate that is "distasteful" to some
constituency. This is unsubstantiated.

The nature of the work of a study group and a working group
is fundamentally different. The task of a study group is basically
administrative and marketing, to get a PAR and 5 criteria document
approved. The task of a working group (at least initially) is mostly
technical, evaluating technical proposals and writing a standard. The
types and numbers of people that would attend the study group and working
group meetings can be expected to be quite different. Why should the
working group members have their choices of officer candidates limited to those
that chose to perform the administrative and marketing tasks of a study group,
when the character of the work changes dramatically at the formation of the
working group?

In 5.1.3.1 reverse the
deletion of the first sentence of this clause (i.e., put it back). This
is clear and concise. The deletion is completely ineffective, since all
one has to do at the first meeting is present a letter of intention to
participate to the chair, in order to gain instant membership according to the
sentence that is proposed to start 5.1.3.1. Also delete the first
two sentences in the second paragraph.

Attached you will find the
text for an LMSC P&P revision ballot on WG Membership. This ballot
was approved at the Friday March 14, 2003 plenary session. It is identical
to what was presented at the Plenary session except that per the minutes of
that meeting I have change the Section number 1.1.1.1 to 5.1.3.1. The
purpose and rationale for the ballot are as given in the attached document.

Ballot Opens: March
27, 2003

Ballot Closes: April 28,
2003 11:59 PM

WG chairs, if you haven't
already done so, please invite your WG members to comment through you.
Buzz, please ensure this gets sent to the "802ALL" email list as
well. While I encourage discussion on the reflector, I am trying something new
this time, and have included a ballot response / comment form. Prior to
the close of the ballot, please fill out the attached form with your vote and a
summary of your comments. Then send it to the reflector. I will
accept updated forms until the close of the ballot. I’m also open
to comments on how this process works. Hopefully this will make it easier
for me to compile and distribute comments, and not much more difficult for
everyone else. If it doesn’t work, we will fall back to the old
process the next round of ballots.